Storyboard

And here is the animatic for it!

Reference Pictures

How does a elephant move?

How do I want him to move?

 Some tropical trees. How do I create a stylistic tree in 3d?

Bird of Paradise

Banana Tree

3d Topical trees

Money Tree

My Object and Story

So here is my object:

This is the story of how an elephants peaceful life gets disturbed by a group of mice. As our character eats its meal, the mice sudenly appear to have fun with the elephant's fear of them. At the beginning it is desperately trying to find a hiding spot away from the mice. Not being able to find one, agitates the elephant and in its confusion it stumbles, tripping on its own feet, and within confusion steps on and squashes one of the mice by accident...Our hero has now found a new way to deal with mice!

Starry-Eyed Surprise

Something's gone wrong, and it started with a star...Not bad!

Apparently when "Saving As" in the 3dsMax2011 version there is an option for 3dsMax2010 scene file, which works from a 64-bit to 32-bit system as well. That could come in handy as info..